Broth Soup

The video is a series of short pieces of very buff nude people. The models don't speak, and the backgrounds are solid colors, with no decorations to let you know where the models are. So these nudes are, if not truly in limbo, certainly no place you can describe. In each short piece, the model is/models are performing some G-rated activity that shows off their body: a gymnast man works out on the hanging rings, two women hold in front of them a gauzy cloth that is being blown by an off-camera fan, a blonde runs a fluorescent tube down the length of her body, etc.

Behrani, an Iranian immigrant buys a California bungalow, thinking he can fix it up, sell it again, and make enough money to send his son to college. However, the house is the legal property of former drug addict Kathy. After losing the house in an unfair legal dispute with the county, she is left with nowhere to go. Wanting her house back, she hires a lawyer and befriends a police officer. Neither Kathy nor Behrani have broken the law, so they find themselves involved in a difficult moral dilemma.

THE BRIGHT DAY weaves a story that has its roots in the complexity of Iran’s draconian laws governing capital punishment. A kindergarten teacher hopes to aid the father of one of her young students, a man accused of manslaughter, by convincing each of seven reluctant witnesses to come forward. No one lacks a hidden agenda in this drama in which shades of truth collide with self-interest and the specter of payback. (Gene Siskel Film Center)

Breath is about an Iranian family who lives in Iran. It tells the story of Bahar, who is living with her father, Ghafour and Grandmother during the 70s.She is living in her childish and surreal world, filled with their dreams and fantasies.

The renovation of a rambling family homestead becomes a metaphor for an unexpected assault on traditional family values when a newly married twenty-something brings her architect husband to draw up the plans for her aunt and uncle’s rehab job.

Two homicide detectives investigates the murder of a woman ...

A director of a television series on the history of cinema, who has been grappling with the screenplay of his first feature film, receives an assignment to oversee the installation of a television relay station in a remote region of Zahedan province. He has already hired Turkmen tribespeople for his film and selected his filming location. Meanwhile his wife, who is working on her Ph.D. dissertation about the Mongol invasion of Iran, attempts to dissuade him from accepting the assignment. One night, while working on his history of the cinema series, the director fantasizes a diegetic world that consists of clever juxtapositions of his different worlds: the history of cinema, the history of the mongol invasion, his own film idea and his imminent assignment to the desert.

The story is about the world of a small family with familiar dreams and not so remarkable problems. The mother is trying to lead everything to save her family, but small events disarrange all her plans.

A coming-of-age story about Jack, a 16-year old Iranian boy growing up in 1989 Los Angeles. With the 1979 Iranian Revolution a distant memory, the AIDS movement as a backdrop, and a haunting score by Vampire Weekend's Rostam Batmanglij, Jack learns how to stage his own much smaller revolution within the confines of his traditional family.

A young woman's wedding becomes a ritual of mourning when her sister and family die in an auto accident on the way to the wedding. The sisters' mother refuses to accept her daughter's death, and in the midst of wedding guests and mourners, including the drivers of the truck that caused the accident, she orders the wedding to take place. But how can the daughter marry in the midst of a wake and without the family's traditional mirror, which the sister was bringing to the service?

In 1980, a teenage boy escapes the unrest in Iran only to face more hostility in America, due to the hostage crisis. Determined to fit in, he joins the school's floundering wrestling team.

In a small valley, riders pursue and kill a man. A horse thief, so his assassins claim. But for his ten year old son Issa, the disappearance of his father causes an avalanche of problems. With the family name stigmatized, Issa is bullied by the other children in the village. While his mother fights to clear her husbands name, Issa is left to his own devices. But unexpectedly, his solitude gives birth to his freedom, his real passion, horses.

A young homeless girl supports herself as a surrogate mother for money. A human rights attorney tries to help her change her life, but ithe challenges seem insurmountable. This is a rarely seen side of Iranian society.

A satirical take on the mundane absurdities of life in modern-day Iran, these nine vignettes illuminate the lighter side of enduring under authoritarian rule. Whether choosing a name for a newborn, graduating from grade school, getting a driver’s license, applying for a job, or seeking approval for a film script, if you live in Iran, you best come fluent in Orwellian discourse. Progressing along a rough timeline from birth to death, each story is shot in a static camera angle as a single petitioner negotiates with an authority figure hovering just outside of frame, who is practiced in the language of doublespeak.

A young taxi driver who is a happy man encounters lots of different stories through his daily life. One day, he is driving a young American woman and he enters an unusual and protracted adventure which he should follow to the end. The American woman has lost the address she is going to refer and it is almost impossible to reach her relatives. The young driver believes that he should help the woman until she finds her relatives and this issue causes many problems between him and his fiancee. He also has other problems regarding the American woman and his unusual friend.

Behzad, who has been in prison for manslaughter for a long time, has a son who does not know about him. When he is introduced, the son goes through a conflict. Then, as a family, they go to the victim's family seeking consent so Reza would be released.

In the aftermath of a devastating rumor, Iman and his family have been forced to flee Iran. As refugees, they end up in a run-down hotel in northern Sweden. Despite feeling powerless, Iman tries to maintain his role as the family patriarch. To increase their chances of asylum, he breaks a promise to his wife and joins the local wrestling club. As the rumors start to resurface, Iman’s fear and desperation begin to take a hold.

Famed actress Susan Taslimi plays three roles here: Kian, who doubts her identity; Vida, the twin sister, a self-assured artist; and their mother, who gives up one child out of fear of poverty, then deprives the other of affection because she deeply regrets the child whom she has abandoned.

Against the tumultuous backdrop of Iran's 1953 CIA-backed coup d'état, the destinies of four women converge in a beautiful orchard garden, where they find independence, solace and companionship.

The uneasy relationship between a mother and daughter is made all the more turbulent by drug abuse in this downbeat drama from Iranian filmmakers Rakhshan Bani-Etemad and Mohsen Abdolvahab